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Friday, June 29, 2018

Want to Help Professors Become Better Teachers? Find Them a Mentor | The Chronicle of Higher Education

"As a lecturer in aerospace and
mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona, Justine Schluntz
takes pride in her commitment to teaching" explains Beth McMurtrie, writes about technology’s influence on teaching and the future of learning.

Photo: Justine Schluntz, a lecturer at the U. of Arizona, poses with her "Intro to Engineering" section.

So when the university began
inviting instructors to use its new collaborative learning spaces, she
decided it was a great chance to move away from the traditional lecture
format toward active learning. But she was also nervous about trying a
form of teaching that was unfamiliar to her.For help, she turned to Kasi Kiehlbaugh. The professor of civil and
environmental engineering had been involved with faculty learning
communities on campus and was familiar with active-learning techniques."The week before the summer course started we sat down and she said,
Tell me what you’re going to do," Schluntz recalls. Her plan, as she
told Kiehlbaugh, was to go over the syllabus on the first day of class
and give students the highlights.Kiehlbaugh encouraged her instead to get her students involved early
by having them take charge, first by reading the syllabus themselves,
then telling her what they thought was important. "It was such a small
thing," Schluntz says, "but it completely changed how I thought about
teaching that class."

The value of faculty mentorship to young instructors and researchers has long been known. But it may not occur very often: According to one survey,
only about one in four undergraduate-teaching faculty members mentor
others "to a great extent." Typically, mentors help their less
experienced peers do things like learn how to navigate campus
hierarchies, plan their careers, or map out research agendas.
But mentorship can also help improve teaching. As professors,
including seasoned faculty members, explore new ways of teaching in
online and active-learning classrooms, they too find that having a
strong mentor is critical to their success. Instructional designers may
be great at helping redesign a curriculum. And academic technologists
are key to understanding new technologies. But for day-to-day teaching
challenges, nothing beats an ally who has been there, done that. But it
may not occur very often: According to one survey, only about one in
four undergraduate-teaching faculty members mentor others "to a great
extent."Read more... Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.